It's not the painless choice
that I've coached myself to believe it is

But why not, you idiot cynic?

Because I only find happiness
in moments of ignorance

And?

And in those moments of ignorance
I find minutes of shame

And?

And in those minutes of shame
I find hours of sadness

And?!

And in those hours of sadness
I find  endless  defeat




...that's why I sleep life away

Why, you fool?

Because in a lifetime of slumber
one finds nothing at all

Baby, aren't I pretty, in that tortured kind of way?
Don't these dark circles under my eyes add something?
A little sense of mystery? A taste of poetic desperation?
Baby, don’t you love to play with this mane of dirt blonde hair?
It’s a marvel of half-wit curls, don’t you think?
And don’t I have the bluest ocean eyes?
Not quite Liz Taylor, more the polluted Toronto lakeshore
But doesn't this wide face have so much character?
Like a 1950's housewife, you sometimes said

Tell me baby, aren’t I pretty, a real sight for sore eyes?
A little bit pretty, a little bit ugly
Don’t I match with my insides?

You want me in your lustful way
You want me in my playful debate

But I wanted you to not just want me
     I wanted you to need me

You need me in the sense that I put up with the *******
You need me in the way that I can offer you retreat
You need me to calm your soul when it hurts to breathe

But you don't crave my soul so much

I wanted you to need me
But then I realized

     I never needed you

To Death and You, the terrible two:

Can you feel your grip loosening around my neck?
Can you feel me getting lighter, smarter, farther all the time?
Can you feel my heartbeat finding its own pace,
Not matching yours, as it did before?

Can you feel me slipping into
Happiness    for a change?

We were once a Sisyphean process
Low ups and lower downs
We once were endless
Or so we thought

Can you feel my lightness overcoming your dark?
No longer in the shadows of the consuming unlit?
Do you think it’s true, what they say?
Do we not know what we have    until it’s gone?
I think so, not so much for you as for me
I didn’t know how much you held me down
Until I sailed the skies of the blissful unknown

This is one last hoorah for the lowest of lows
One last note to those I leave behind in the dark
One last toast to Death and You, my all-consuming terrible two

I adore the phrase,
       "You're going places"

Yes, I am

Later I'm going to the supermarket
Because I'm running low on avocados

And after that
I might stop by Addy's house
To pick up my blue button down

Maybe I'll go to Turkey, Bali, Istanbul
Hit every gritty, run-down pub I find
You know, I'd love to go to Ireland someday

There are a few places, however,
I would like to avoid, as would anyone
Jail, divorce court, Wal-Mart on Boxing Day
Just to name a few

But I'm going places, yes I am
Who knows where, who knows when
One thing I'm certain is
Some day I'll go some place
And I'm never coming back

So between now and then
I'm going places
Anytime I can

I'm a young kind of broken
I don't break easily, but I break consistently

I haven't devoted half my life to a love
Only to watch it flicker and dissolve

I haven't drowned in bills I can't pay
Handing my dinner off to my better bits of DNA

I'm a young kind of broken

I break at the sight of documentaries
Hosting hate, disease and inhumanities

I break at hurting Grandmothers
Euthanized dogs and dead Grandfathers

I break consistently, a young kind of broken
Holding in my arms love, hope and humanity
But I can't handle it all, so I may let a piece drop out
Every once in a while
And when I bend to pick it up
They all come crashing down

I'm a young kind of broken
Broken all the same

All my broken elders:
Would you let me break with you?
Will you be there to help collect what remains?

"Fight depression with chain smoking!" he says, half-joking
Fiddling with the lighter in his pocket
(He knows about her grandfather's lungs boxed up underground)

They will exchange the usual
Books, philosophical ambiguities and terrified uncertainties
Ideas of the unknown, which makes up more than the known

They will talk about how they would both rather die alone
Than surrounded by false pretense of love

Every night is an existential crisis, every other night one will feel strong
On the graveyard shift of saving the same life for the millionth time